hey everyone how are you doing welcome to today's video
today we're going to talk about something a little more serious this is
going to be an interview that was just released with the british gq with john
boyega there's going to be profanity in this
video there are going to be racial themes in this video so if you're
sensitive to all that turn away but for those of you who want to dive
into it and really understand what this brilliant man went through keep watching
or go to the link down below which has this full interview so you can read it
for yourself i'm not going to cover the whole thing
i'm just going to focus on the parts where he discusses star wars because
well that's what this channel is all about
so in this video we're going to go over a few different things now if you didn't
know john boyega's character as finn was
completely bullshit that's not a subjective comment it is
objective it is the way it is we all know it
and even he knows it and that is the theme of this article this video
and the issues he is coming out with and raising awareness of
now there were a lot of things that he had to deal with whether it was from the
fans racially or even from apparently what we can see
here was disney racially and what they did
with this character now there's a lot of interesting stuff
with his life i implore you to go read this article once again
now let's jump to what pertains to this video which is the star wars stuff
and him getting cast in the force awakens well now enough is enough
almost after a decade in the business after the life-changing overwhelming and
at times stifling reality of operating within the
sprawling death star of franchise filmmaking
he is just about done abiding by any old rules as a certain nigerian boat captain
can grimly attest which if you read the full article he almost
died because someone tried to scam him for
money john boyega is not really the man you think he is
and now he is finally ready to let the world know for boyega 2017 was a year
thick with opportunity if capturing the role of finn in 2015
star wars the force awakens represented the professional equivalent
of an enormous poker win then this was the period when he
effectively staggered to the cashier window with an armful of chips
having already wrapped ryan johnson's sequel the last jedi
he also made catherine bigelow's detroit founded his own company upper room in
order to produce and star in pacific rim uprising and by spring he was headlining
a revival of a bruising german tragedy witsek and the old vic in london
in the continued afterglow of that first franchise defibrillating star wars film
he continued to notice a stylist he'd hired when he first started doing press
cringing at certain clothes i wanted to go for
the hairdresser who had no experience of working with hair like his
still had the guts to pretend and he decided that he could no longer grin and
bear it like a grateful competition winner
during the press of the force awakens i went along with it he notes and
obviously at the time i was very genuinely happy to be a part of it
but my dad always tells me one thing don't overpay with respect
you can pay respect but sometimes you'll be overpaying and selling yourself short
with the lucasfilm branded elephant in the room acknowledged
it is even harder to ignore this is boyega's first substantial interview
since finishing the franchise his first since last year's the rise of
skywalker tied a highly contentious hurried ribbon on the 43 year old space
saga how does he reflect on his environment and the way
the newest trilogy was concluded it's so difficult to maneuver
he says exhaling deeply visibly calibrating the level of professional
diplomacy to display you get yourself involved in projects
and you're not necessarily going to like everything
but what i would like to say to disney is do not bring out a black character
market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are
and then have them pushed aside it's so difficult to maneuver he says
exhaling deeply visibly calibrating the level of professional diplomacy to
display you get yourself involved in projects
and you're not necessarily going to like everything
but what i would say to disney is do not bring out a black character
market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are
and then have them push to the side it's not good
i'll say it straight up he's talking about himself here
about the character of finn the former stormtrooper who wielded a lightsaber in
the first film before being somewhat nudged to the
periphery but he is also talking about other people of color in the cast
naomi aki and kelly murray tran and even oscar isaac
a brother from guatemala who he feels suffered the same treatment
he is acknowledging that some people will say he's crazy or making it up but
the recorded character hierarchy of the last jedi was particularly hard to take
like you guys knew what to do with daisy ridley you knew what to do with adam
driver you knew what to do with these other
people but when it came to kelly marie tran when it came to john boyega you
know fuck all so what do you want me to say what they
want you to say is i enjoyed being a part of it it was a
great experience i'll take that deal when it's a great
experience they gave all the nuance to adam driver all the
nuance to daisy ridley let's be honest daisy knows this adam knows this
everybody knows i'm not exposing anything he's on a
breathless roll now breaking his long corporate omerta to
touch on the unthinking systemic mistreatment of black characters and
blockbusters they're always scared they're always
freaking sweating and what he sees as the relative salvage job that returnee
director jj abrams performed on the rise of skywalker everyone needs
to leave my boy alone he wasn't even supposed to come back and
try to save your shit even though he also acknowledges that it
was an amazing opportunity and a stepping stone that has
precipitated so much good in his life and career
he is palpably exhilarated to be finally saying all this
but to dismiss these words as merely professional bitterness or paranoia
is to miss the point his primary motivation is to show the frustrations
and difficulties of trying to operate within what can
feel like a permanently rigged system he is trying
really to let you know what it feels like to have a boyhood dream
ruptured by the toxic realities of the world
other directors agreed and in 2014 he found himself brought into the star wars
fooled by j.j abrams cue his reveal is a conflicted
stormtrooper once known as fn2187 an observed attempted boycott the fourth
highest grossing film of all time and laterally the millions that enabled
boyega to surprise his parents with their own brand new house
three years ago yet again this is another instance when voyega seems keen
to revise the public record on how something really played out
whereas previously he responded to the fragrantly racist commentary that
greeted his casting in the force awakens with
bullishness get used to it as his since deleted
instagram response post had it now he is keen to discuss the
lasting psychic wounds that an ordeal like that leaves i'm the only cast
member who had their own unique experience of that franchise based on
their race he says holding my gaze let's just leave
it like that it makes you angry with a process like
that it makes you much more militant it changes you because you realize i got
given this opportunity but i'm in an industry that wasn't even ready for me
nobody else in the cast had people saying they were going to boycott the
movie because they were in it nobody else had the uproar and death
threats sent to their instagram dms and social media saying black this and
black that and you shouldn't be a stormtrooper
nobody else had that experience but yet people are surprised that i'm
this way that's my frustration all right so i'm going to stop here and i want to
cut in and say that you know i i know that there's tons of racism that goes on
in the world but to see it come from within and to
see what they did with this character i mean we all knew it we all saw it it's
not like we're stupid these are things that i've been
saying all the time there's things that we i always talk about on rule of two
with mark and mark has even said that he thinks
that finn was the most interesting character i mean a rogue
stormtrooper stormtrooper that turns into a good guy
and becomes a jedi becomes a force user becomes force sensitive
that's such a unique story that we haven't seen before
and for them to click bait the shit out of
john boyega out of finn with the force awakens trailer with him holding the
lightsaber him doing that for maybe two seconds
getting his ass kicked by kylo ren and then his entire character was just
reduced to rey that was it i mean he's an actor
he's paid to read lines and act a character and those were the lines that
he was given so what's his fault there is no fault the fault is with the
directors or the writers who wrote that and obviously he is tight with jj abrams
and keeps saying i liked how he said don't blame my boy
he wasn't even supposed to come in and save your shit because he knows how
messed up it was and how they completely pardoned my french fucked the
franchise it's true you did you guys ruined it and
now you gotta pick up all the pieces and you gotta
hire john favreau and you gotta put dave flony where he should have been from the
very beginning and now you got oh god
i get so much pent up frustration with this stuff because i got my own stories
about things behind the scenes uh nothing like this you know but it means
just just just shady shit like this it's just so weird it's so weird
especially from a company where you think everything is so all-inclusive and
this and that it's like why would you use his character and you
look at that that poster which was a big twitter
thing um the north american one versus the
chinese one and you see the complete difference and
john boyega shared it and he's like why am i this tiny little
character in the poster whereas in the north american i'm
a proper size according to my role
what is this and and you click bait the crap out of me with the lightsaber and
the poster it's like just just to be pushed aside at the very
end this has got me pretty riled up i want to know what you guys think in
the comments please go read the full interview down below
um this is the kind of bullshit that needs to stop don't click bait
characters just based on color to be all inclusive
and this and that and then push them aside once you get your
revenue and uh reduce them to
rey that's it like
there's a lot more you guys can read it's a very great interview about his
whole life and all his experiences with everything
so i'm going to link it down below
i'll catch you guys next time